Dawn Takes In A Stray
by SRu
Summary: After Proof of Purchase, Lydecker is caught between a new friend he can't trust, and an old enemy he can't suspect. R for the ususal reasons. COMPLETE STORY!
1. Luck hurts

The standard disclaimer about who owns Dark Angel characters applies. (It's not me, folks) Dawn appears courtesy of Dawn, who has kindly permitted me to use her name and likeness so she can read about herself.  
  
**************** Three weeks since the last time he'd been behind the wheel. Headlights in the rear-view mirror brought back vivid memories.   
  
The SUV rolling off the road, and down into the water -- he was lucky to be alive.   
  
He'd been lucky to get out through the broken window as the water rushed in. With the last kick to get clear, he'd felt something, glass, twisted metal, biting into his leg. He'd cut his shoelaces, and the knife had slipped from his fingers as he kicked off boots, and shrugged out of the leather jacket that felt like it was dragging him to the bottom.  
  
After much too long in the cold water, he'd found himself part way up a shallow slope of beach. The waves were trying to suck him back as they receded, and the wind was removing any last traces of warmth from his body. He couldn't make the importance of getting out of the water translate into actual motion up the beach. It finally occurred to him to wonder if he'd been loosing blood.  
  
Then the wind-driven spray around him lit up. He could see the headlights of a truck driving down the slope towards him. It stopped just above the debris at the high-water line. He wondered if he should let himself slide back into the water to evade whoever was about to step out of the truck and finish him off.  
  
The truck's driver was a young woman, in a red windbreaker and jeans with the knees missing. When she got closer, he could see that her surplus-store jump boots were in desperate need of polish. She leaned down to touch his face, and he'd managed to lift his head to look her in the eye. The wind was turning her short brown hair into a chaotic halo around a pale face. Her mouth opened in what might have been surprise, or, under different circumstances, recognition.  
  
He was lucky that she had the wiry strength to drag him out of the water.   
  
The next morning he'd found out that her name was Dawn. It was strange that she hadn't done the sensible thing -- drop him off at the nearest emergency room. But, that was lucky as well. Donald Michael Lydecker was wanted by the police. Vertes and McGinnes were only the beginning of that list.  
  
So he'd had a couple of weeks to think about how lucky he was. He felt trapped in Dawn's tiny apartment, but the alternatives were much worse.  
  
"Luck hurts," he thought as he slowed the truck for the exit ramp. "Me now, but someone else soon."   
  
He was beginning to wonder what sort of pay-back Dawn was going to want for fishing him out of the icy water and keeping him as a house guest since then. Every so often, he'd catch the young woman looking at him. She would always drop her eyes, and the faintest trace of embarrassed guilt would flash across her face. He could do without that sort of distraction for this trip, so he'd waited until she was asleep to swipe her keys, limp down the stairs from her apartment, and pay an after-hours visit to BM Corporation. One of Renfro's business partners had signed the lease on the building, and Dek wanted to know what was going on there, badly enough to go check for himself.  
  
He quickly identified the darkest spot in the empty parking lot. He pulled Dawn's truck into it, and killed the engine. No signs of life in the allegedly deserted office building, and no traffic on the access road.  
  
He gathered his mental focus, and the breaking and entering tools from the passenger seat. He checked that the dome light was in the 'off' position, and opened the door. Getting out of the driver's seat was a challenge. The gashes in his left leg were a long way from being healed. He checked that the Pathfinder's keys were in his pocket, and closed the door.  
  
"Vanity is a stupid vice," Lydecker reminded himself. "And not even as much fun a fifth of Jack Daniels." The door creaked open, and he added the cane to his collection of hardware. 


	2. A friendly chat

Zack awoke from another bad dream. At one time he had wondered what could possibly be worse than the 'I can't move' nightmares. He'd found out that waking up, and still not being able to move was worse. Things had gone down hill from there. As his condition stabilized, he and his life-support equipment were monitored less often. With no one moving around him, it was far too easy for him to lose track of time, space, and any sort of coherent thought. Now that he'd been moved to a new place, he thought they were only checking in once a day.  
  
He stared up at the acoustic tile ceiling. Not even an insect or two for distraction. For the three thousand, four hundred and ninety-second time, he wondered about his sanity. He was sure of that number. "X-5s are good with details," he told himself. He thought about all the other things that X-5s were good at, none of which he could do while strapped down and connected to machines. He might as well be dead.  
  
The sound of footsteps in the hall caught his attention. "Can't be the security guard. . . too slow . . . trying to be quiet." The steps paused, and the door creaked open.  
  
"Oh Hell," said a familiar voice. The door closed again. Zack could hear the man's heart racing, and the soft sigh of air rushing into and out of the man's lungs as he moved around the room.  
  
"Lydecker, you bastard!" Zack tried to scream. He wasn't even in control of his own breathing anymore, and plastic tubing was pressed against his vocal cords. No sound. "You left me here."  
  
"They don't come by to chat much?" asked Lydecker, who's face moved into Zack's field of view. Zack's best guess was that the expression was pity.  
  
Zack swiveled his eyes from left to right, the closest he could get to shaking his head 'no'. The older man's jaw tightened, and Zack recognized anger. Something was going to happen now.  
  
"Max escaped," said Lydecker, who moved out of view again. "And the place burned down. It's a big mess, and lost and lonely X series kids are all over the place." There was a long pause, then from somewhere in what must be a far corner of the room. "Gorilla named White is in charge of cleaning up the mess, and he's been working on terminating the lot of them. I guess he just hasn't bothered with you yet."  
  
Zack listened to the sound of fingers on a keyboard, and the scrape of plastic against a mouse pad. "Morse code," he thought. "My only hope for escape."  
  
When Lydecker reappeared, Zack was ready. A long blink, a short, a long blink, pause, two short.... "K-I-L-L-M-E"  
  
Lydecker blinked back in surprise. "No one has bothered to discuss your condition with you?"  
  
Zack's eyes swiveled left and right. "K-I-L-L-M-E" he repeated. "P-U-L-L-P-L-U-G."  
  
"You are an X-5," Lydecker replied, turning away. "It might not be that simple."  
  
Zack relaxed as the sounds of machinery ceased, one by one. Soon it would all be over. Air wasn't being forced into his lungs. Blood wasn't being pumped through his veins. All the oxygen would be gone soon. He could die in peace and quiet. Lydecker was studying him carefully, but Zack didn't care anymore.  
  
He gasped for air, by reflex, and realized that he'd just managed to suck in some oxygen that hadn't been through that stupid machine first. A small triumph, but the best he could hope for now. Just a matter of waiting for the end.  
  
Zack was surprised to hear the familiar steps of one of the security guards in the hall. He tried to blink, to get Lydecker's attention, but the old man was looking at something else, over to the side where Zack couldn't see.  
  
The door opened, and Lydecker vanished from Zack's view again. Zack remembered that tunnel vision was one of the signs of oxygen deprivation, and was strangely pleased to notice his field of view closing in.  
  
"What are you doing here?" Zack realized he'd never heard the security guard's voice before. "This is a secure area."  
  
"You can put the gun down, Son," said Lydecker calmly. "I was just telling stories to my old friend here." His voice and footsteps were moving away, towards the door, and Zack thought he heard the tip of a cane against the floor. "He's remarkably polite. Never interrupts."  
  
"Hold it!" snapped the guard. Zack heard the cane clatter to the floor.   
  
The gun shot felt like it was caving in his eardrums. The ringing in his ears made him wonder if he'd heard a body hit the floor or not, but he couldn't deny the sound of pain behind him. He could see bits of dust floating down from the ceiling, hanging in the air current.  
  
Zack decided that he didn't really care how the wrestling match he was hearing came out. He was still breathing under his own power, but it was making him tired, and he could sleep. The sound of fracturing neck vertebrae surprised him, but it was followed by quiet.  
  
"Max is OK, and I'm going to die peacefully in bed, sort of," thought Zack happily as his eyes closed.  
  
"Six minutes, fifty-seven seconds," said Lydecker's voice, somewhere off to the right. The sounds of the machines came back, one by one. Zack was breathing filtered, forced air again.   
  
"You are an amazing piece of engineering, Zack. Doppler ultrasound scans from two weeks ago show that you are growing a functioning heart." Zack was annoyed. His vision was clearing, and it was obvious that he was going to be stuck here, staring at the ceiling, forever.   
  
"It's a long way from being full size, and it isn't strong enough to keep you going all by itself, yet. Trouble is, I can't get you out. I'm here by myself." Lydecker sighed. "I'll tell Max where you are, but once your keepers realize that we know, it's going to be a lot harder to get in and get you."   
  
"I need to go. Someone had a really good try at killing me, and I can't escape and evade with the speed that the situation requires." His hand rested on Zack's shoulder for just a moment.   
  
"Three months," thought Zack. "Gets me a heart that's good for six minutes and fifty-seven seconds worth of oxygen." He realized he could start planning an escape now. It would take a long time to plan, but sanity wasn't going to be a problem anymore.  
  
Zack had a mission. 


	3. The cat came back

Dawn woke up to the sound of a car pulling into the gravel driveway. Her first panicked thought was "They are coming for Dek!" She looked at her alarm clock . Three thirty in the morning, and totally dark. Her bare feet hit the cool floor as the engine shut off.  
  
She felt in the laundry basket for the dirty jeans she'd tossed there last night. The basket was empty, except for a lonely sock. She decided that her flannel night gown would have to do.  
  
She padded past the open bathroom door, and the tiny kitchenette, and put her hand on the frame of her old room mate's bed, which took up about a third of what was supposed to be the living room.  
  
"Dek!" she whispered, patting the blanket carefully. "Wake up!" She grabbed the blanket, pulled it back, and realized that the shape on the bed was a pile of her dirty laundry. The sheets were totally cold. Wherever Dek was, he'd been gone for a while.  
  
She looked out the front window. That was HER truck in front of the door, not over to the side under the trees where she parked it yesterday. The truck's door swung open. She glanced at the kitchen counter, and realized that her keys were missing. "I'm going to kill him!" she snarled.  
  
Dawn grabbed a sweatshirt from the hook next to her door, pulled it on over her nightgown. It took only a moment to open the dead bolt, turn the knob, and then she was racing down the stairs. Past the owner's office, another couple of seconds to un-stick the latch on the front door.  
  
The light from inside showed her Lydecker, leaning against the fender of her truck. She stood out on the little porch and let the door swing closed behind her.  
  
"What the Hell do you think you are doing?" she hissed.  
  
"Returning your truck." He held out her keys, but didn't move away from the truck.  
  
"That's not what I meant. You are supposed to be asleep." Dawn wondered if she were old enough to start sounding like her mother.   
  
"That's an excellent idea." He took a few unsteady steps from the truck to the porch, leaning on the cane. Dawn put out her hand, and he let her help him up the two steps and in through the front door.  
  
In the light inside she could see dark red wetness sticking his pants against his leg. "You're bleeding again."  
  
"I ran into a bit of trouble" Dek looked up the stairs with grim determination, and his fingers pressed into her shoulder with bruising force.  
  
  
  
"Where were you?" asked Dawn, as Dek took the last step and let go of her shoulder.  
  
"Visiting an old friend." Dawn motioned him towards the bed, and turned left into her bedroom to get scissors and things. She stopped at the kitchen sink to scrub her hands.  
  
Dek examined his bloody slacks, and tossed them onto the rest of her laundry, which was now piled up under the window. "The bitch ripped his heart out, Dawn." He sat on the edge of the bed.  
  
"I'm sorry." Dawn folded herself cross-legged on the carpet, and settled his foot in her lap. As she carefully scissored through the soggy gauze, she wished she could tell if she was hurting him.   
  
"Do you ever want to help someone, but realize that there is nothing at all you can do?" She looked up, and noticed that he was staring at her collection of smiley-face fridge magnets, but not seeing them.   
  
Dawn nodded, but didn't say anything. "Every time I look at you," she thought.   
  
"I saw two more newspaper articles about transgeneics, yesterday." she offered, trying to change the subject. The last of the bandage fell away, and Dawn could tell that whatever Dek had been up to, he'd only managed to re-open one of the cuts.   
  
Lydecker yawned. "Sorry, what did you say?"   
  
"The X series transgenics that got out." She ripped into the paper around a square of sterile gauze.  
  
"What do you know about the X series?" Hazel eyes locked onto hers, and Dawn realized that she'd slipped. She hid her embarrassment for a few minutes by finishing up with the bandages and tape.  
  
"I've been doing some research," she finally confessed. "but the organization is very difficult to track, so I don't know much."   
  
"You know, you're not supposed to know anything at all." His tone could have been a threat, or just a casual observation.  
  
"Just little bits here and there." She suspected that Lydecker would be able to fill in a lot of missing pieces, if he wanted to.   
  
"Dawn, I want to discuss your findings with you," he said. "But I need about twelve hours of sleep first. Wake me up when you get home from work. OK?"   
  
"OK. But promise me you won't go looking for any more trouble."   
  
"Not until you get back. You have my word." He smiled at her, then leaned over to brush his lips against her forehead.  
  
Before she could figure out how to answer, he was under the blanket, facing the wall, and asleep.  
  
"Is that a thanks?" mused Dawn, as she collected the empty wrappers from the carpet around her. "An apology? Or the shadow of a kiss?"   
  
****  
  
Dawn remembered her Grandmother's cat. Fuzz was a big, mean, cream-colored tomcat. Every night the cat would go out, looking for other cats to beat up on. Every morning he'd stroll in, licking his wounds and looking for a warm spot to sleep for the day.   
  
As she left her apartment, she looked back to see the blond head against the pillow. She decided that Dek and Fuzz would have gotten along fabulously. 


	4. Ancient History

Lydecker woke with the sun in his eyes. His first thought was "I guess I'm not going running today either." The clock told him he had just enough time to get clean, shaved, and dressed before Dawn got back. Moving around confirmed his decision not to go running, but didn't make him any happier about it.   
  
Adding to his dark mood was the fashion sense of Dawn's brother or boyfriend or whatever. The guy had left a box of miscellaneous clothing behind, and it was more or less Lydecker's size. A rainbow tye-dye T-shirt was on top of the pile. "Beggars can't be choosers," he reminded himself, but moved it to the bottom anyway. The next shirt down had a picture of a zombie in a fast-food uniform, holding a Thompson submachine gun, and a wheel of cheese with lots of holes in it. Very strange, but it was black. That and a pair of black fatigue pants met minimum standards for not upsetting his host.  
  
*******  
  
"Discussion implies two ways, Dek." Dawn, in ragged jeans and a T-shirt with pictures of power tools, sat cross-legged on the floor. She pulled a file folder out of the several dozen spread out around her.  
  
"Why should I give you any answers?" he snapped. The Morris chair certainly qualified as sturdy, and even comfortable, but not dignified. Dawn had insisted, and now Lydecker was feeling old.  
  
"I found out what you were up to last night." Dawn handed over a newspaper clipping headed "Security guard dies in burglary attempt."  
  
Lydecker adjusted the glasses on his nose and frowned.  
  
"It's the right distance away to account for the extra miles you put on my truck. You had plenty of time to drive, vandalize the central hub for camera switching, snoop around, get caught, fight with the poor guy, and drive back," she explained. "And, they were on my list of interesting places."  
  
"Assuming that was me, why am I interested?" He handed back the clipping, and folded the glasses.  
  
"Same reason I am, I think," said Dawn. "Place looked abandoned, but still had power, water, data-quality phone service, and armed security."  
  
"Let's try a different topic," offered Lydecker. "Why are you interested in me?"  
  
"I'll start at the beginning. I'm interested in holes. Things that should be there, but aren't." Dawn kicked aside several of the battered folders and stretched her legs. "Information falls into holes, money falls into holes, and so do people. People are especially significant, because it's really hard to make them disappear."  
  
"Live ones, you mean."  
  
"Yes. Anyway, I have a couple of photographs from a Swiss genetics conference in '02. I was really interested, because six of the nine people in the photo were effectively missing at the time."  
  
Lydecker examined the photos. The first showed three women, seated at the center of the group, with four men in dark, formal suits standing in a row behind them, all symmetrically arranged around a fair-haired toddler, and blonde baby in a dress. He recognized himself at 35, on the far left of the photo. "I had no idea what a mess that project was going to be," he whispered.  
  
The next was a close-up of the toddler, who looked up at the camera with an intense frown.   
  
The last picture showed the baby crawling on the grass, face in profile. Lydecker realized that a strip of bar code was visible on the back of the baby's neck.   
  
"After a bit of investigation, I found out who all seven of the adults were. All of them except for you have Ph. Ds or Mds. All of them were frequently published up to 1998, at which point they cease to submit anything to any of the journals in the field. Professionally speaking, they disappeared. So what were they doing at a conference?  
  
"I never could figure out who the two kids were. They must be in their late teens or early twenties by now. At one point I thought that two blond children must be yours, but that was easily disproved." Lydecker smirked, but didn't interrupt. He picked up a pen from the mess on the floor.  
  
"Anyway, as of three weeks ago, six of the adults were dead, and you seemed to be missing. I thought that was really strange, because you were the one member of the group that never actually disappeared.  
  
"So, when you turned up, I didn't want to risk loosing my chance at getting my questions answered. Between the police bulletin and the fact that you were about to join the rest of your friends . . . "  
  
"That was a big risk, Dawn. What if the police were right?" He looked up from the piece of paper he was scribbling on.  
  
"Dek, you were half-drowned and bloody! What was I supposed to do? Leave you?"  
  
"And you figured you could always change your mind later."  
  
"That's not fair!"  
  
"No, I suppose not. What do you want to know?"  
  
"Well, I want to start with Dr. Adrienne Vertes," said Dawn, riffling through a thick and battered folder. "She re-appeared in '10, in Central America, then came to Seattle for a couple of months. Her clinic was burglarized, and she was killed, at more or less the same time. The odd thing about that is none of the stories about the burglary mention the body, and there aren't any records -- newspaper or otherwise -- about a murder. You'd think there would be something, some kind of investigation."  
  
"That would depend on who shot her."  
  
Dawn reminded herself to keep a poker-face. She glanced at the photocopy of the autopsy report ". . . fragments of 9 mm jacketed hollow point bullet recovered from. . . "  
  
"Anyway, it's probably just an oversight," she continued brightly. "I really want to hear about the kids."  
  
"What about the kids?"  
  
"Who are they?"  
  
"Well, this one went by Eva," answered Lydecker, handing over the photo of the baby. Dawn realized that he had completed the bar code, in pen.  
  
"Where is she now?"  
  
"In 2009, a number of X-5 children escaped." He closed his eyes, and pressed fingers against the back of his neck. "Project personnel killed several of them, including Eva. There are probably little bits of her in labs all over the country, but I don't really know."  
  
"And the boy?"  
  
"He was also part of the '09 escape, but he was alive as of last night."  
  
"Your friend is at BM Corporation?" asked Dawn with surprise.  
  
"Not by choice. I couldn't figure out how to help him out."  
  
"I want to talk to him."  
  
"This is a really bad idea."  
  
*******  
  
Dawn swung the beam of her flashlight around the empty room. Clean, white, and empty, except for a few loops of wire and ribbon cable hanging from holes in the wall. Water dripped from a couple of hurriedly capped lengths of copper pipe.  
  
"I thought you said this was the place."  
  
"It is," insisted Lydecker, carefully examining the ceiling. The bright white circle from his flashlight scanned back and forth.  
  
"Ah, here it is." He used the cane to lift one of the tiles out of the metal grid, and let the tile fall to the floor. Dawn jumped at the noise, then came over to look.  
  
"Bullet hole," he said, poking a pencil into the hole and out the top of the tile at an angle. "Armed security." 


	5. Research and developments

A belated thanks to Pooh_bah, who has been very kind to beta this stuff, and very patient with whiny e-mail from the author about how badly this story is going.  
  
Go ahead and review. If you like it, tell me how I can do better. If you hate it, mention what particularly makes you want to barf. (unless you just hate Lydecker, in which case I don't want to hear it)  
  
---------  
  
The girl who had been calling herself Zoe stood silently in the girls'(or was that women's?) locker room, holding her breath. No sound of breathing, no motion, just the drip of water from somewhere in the back of the showers. On her way back into the lockers, she caught a glimpse of her red curls in the mirrors, and had to remind herself to be calm.  
  
Aisle number three, between two banks of blue-painted locker doors, and down to the fifth from the end. She dropped her knapsack into the bottom of the empty locker, then hung up her brown canvas coat.   
  
She extracted the H&K pistol and its holster from the inside of her waistband, checked the chambered round, and wedged the pistol behind the knapsack. That left her with just the ceramic knife taped to the inside of her left arm, and all the weapons she was born with.   
  
Long ago, someone had decided that she would never be without a weapon, and worked hard to make sure that she knew it. He had wanted her to know that, awake or asleep, she was dangerous. She had learned.  
  
"Don't think about your reasons," she told herself. "Just remember who the target is." A target that she hadn't seen in over a month. A target that didn't want to be found.  
  
The identification in her wallet said 'Zoe Morgan Braun.' A driver's license and student ID, both fake. The girl in the picture was her, though. Her photos stared back at her with calm hazel eyes, in a square face. Some cash, and nothing else. The wallet went into the back pocket of her khaki pants.  
  
"Just this, and I can get back to being me." She closed the locker and snapped the combination lock into the latch.  
  
On the way out, she checked her hair in the mirror, and made sure that the clip with the bow held her ponytail securely at the base of her neck. "You are just another college student," she told herself, and headed out into the main hall way.  
  
As the front door swung closed behind her, she could hear a conversation to her left.  
  
"Let's start with the graduate library," said a woman's voice.  
  
"You go ahead. I've got a couple of errands, and I'll meet you over there for lunch."  
  
Her target! She broke into a run, expecting to catch sight of the pair. But, when she rounded the corner, there was no one except a woman in a red nylon jacket, with a notebook under her arm and an annoyed expression.  
  
  
****  
  
Dawn let the armload of scientific journals drop on to the green vinyl tabletop in the study cube. The window at the end of the cube was open just a crack, and sunlight streamed in, reminding her that she could be doing something fun. But she was here instead. She settled into the chair with a sigh.   
  
"And I thought Dek was going to help," she muttered to herself. He had invited himself along on her research trip, then abandoned her the moment she parked the truck. But he had promised to meet her for lunch.  
  
She opened her notebook to today's page. Every one of the books and magazines on the table had been identified as missing or 'checked out' when she looked in the computer. The listing of things that she'd actually found on the shelves filled most of the page. Now she had to read through each one of them and figure out if they had anything in common.  
  
It was tedious work, and her mind tended to drift from the cool black and white of the paper in front of her to the smudged pencil graffiti on the tabletop. She quickly discovered that it was almost all pornographic. She guessed that horny grad students spent far too much time here on the third floor, with the dark, dusty shelves of books stretching away on one side, and some tiny drift of breeze and sunlight on the other.   
  
She dragged her mind back from consideration of some of the more lurid cartoons to the stack of journals. The next one down on the stack felt wrong, somehow. It fell open on the desk, open to the cut edges of half a dozen pages which had been removed with a knife or a razor. When she turned to the table of contents to find out what was missing, she found the entry blacked out with a magic marker.   
  
When she held the page at the right angle in the sunlight, she could read "Genetic Analysis of American Indian Remains-Motivation and Techniques. Dr. S. P. Hayworth."  
  
A quick examination of the rest of the journals found five more articles removed. All were by Hayworth.  
  
  
****  
Zoe felt the smell of old books fill her nose. She let the door to the stairwell close silently behind her, and started her carefully inconspicuous search of the third floor. Her eyes rapidly adjusted to the little bit of light that wasn't soaked up by the dull colors of the bindings.  
  
This floor had study cubicles on the East wall. She slunk along the center aisle, looking down each row between the shelves.  
  
There was the familiar face, from the street next to the gym. The red jacket was hanging on the back of her chair, and the girl was twirling a lock of brown hair as she paged through something thick and scholarly.  
  
"Time to make contact," Zoe thought to herself. A quick check confirmed that the man she was looking for was nowhere near by.  
  
"Mind if I sit down?" she asked the brunette, who looked up at her in surprise.  
  
The girl shrugged, so she perched herself on the end of the table.  
  
"Have you ever been shot?" Zoe inquired, venting just a little bit of her growing frustration. The girl's blue eyes widened.  
"No," said the girl, shrinking back in her chair just a bit. "Is this something I should worry about?"  
  
"How much do you know about your boyfriend?" She wanted to tell this poor ignorant girl everything: the project, the shooting, the dead kids.   
  
"I don't know what you're talking about." The girl was turning an interesting shade of pink. Zoe congratulated herself on a lucky guess.  
  
"If you want to get into his pants, you'd better hurry." Zoe flashed a quick, nasty smile, showing teeth. "Some people have other plans for him."  
  
"You must have mistaken me for someone else," said the girl, who was doing a remarkable job of keeping her voice steady. The girl's racing heart was giving her away.  
  
"You also need to know that Dr. Hayworth, who you are so carefully researching," she waved in the general direction of a page of scribbled notes. "is scheduled to be terminated sometime this afternoon."  
  
"Terminated?"  
  
"Killed, executed, assassinated, whatever." Zoe shrugged, emphasizing square shoulders under the green knit. "I'm not sure how it is supposed to happen, but it will be fast and efficient."  
  
"And you know this how?"   
  
"I hear things." She could also hear the stairwell door opening, and quiet footsteps that brought back painful memories. So she ducked back in to the rows of bookshelves before the girl could stop her.  
  
*****  
Dawn got back to the desk to find a man wearing a baseball cap that said 'CAT' sitting in her chair. He was wearing a jacket that featured a design of bark, twigs, and oak leaves, in shades of brown and olive. His elbows were resting on her notebook, and he was staring at her with green eyes.  
  
"I like college towns," said the man, somehow using Dek's voice. "If you look like a redneck, no one ever bothers to look at your face."  
  
Dawn felt her jaw detach itself from her face, as she mentally subtracted the camouflage jacket and the obnoxious baseball cap. It was, in fact, Lydecker.  
  
"Who was just here?" he asked, taking off the hat and dropping it on the table.  
  
"I'm not really sure," she answered. "Did you see her?"   
  
"Just a glimpse, but I saw you go after her. What did she look like up close?"  
  
"Red hair, in a ponytail. A green sweater in that military shade. Matched her eyes." Dawn closed her eyes and visualized the woman. "Athletic build, square face, strong cheekbones. I think she's about twenty. No nail polish, no makeup, no jewelry. She's not quite as tall as I am, but I couldn't catch her."  
  
"She had a head start, Dawn. Did your mysterious red-head have anything to say?" Lydecker leaned back in the chair.  
  
Dawn repeated as much of the conversation as she could remember.  
  
"Sounds to me like she was trying to extract information, and failed," he offered. "Or trying to rattle you, and succeeded."  
  
"Now," he continued, pointing at her notes. "What have you found?"  
  
"Someone is trying to make Hayworth's research vanish. The stuff available on the Internet is already gone. So I think she might be right about someone trying to kill him."  
  
"Do you think she might be the killer?"   
  
"Why would she warn me? And why is she threatening you?"  
  
"I don't think she is. Can we get one of your grad student friends to find out where Dr. Hayworth is supposed to be for the rest of today?"  
  
Dawn was distracted for a moment. "Since when does Dek have green eyes?" she asked herself. The hazel brown she expected was still there at the edge of the irises. "A trick of the light," she decided.   
  
"Yeah," said Dawn. "I'll go ask around." 


	6. How to kill a conversation

"Dr. Hayworth," said Dawn, edging her way into a medium sized office, converted into a small one by stacks of books and journals along the walls.  
  
"Have we met?" asked the man behind the desk, raising his bushy salt and pepper eyebrows and peering at them over his glasses.  
  
"Not formally, anyway. I'm Dawn, and I'd like you to meet my friend. . ."  
  
"Mike," interrupted Lydecker, who looked around the room as if trying to find a safe place to stand between the piles of paper and the file cabinets.  
  
"Nice to meet the two of you. I'm running late, so if we can discuss whatever it is some other time. . ." The fluorescent lights reflected off the tanned dome of his skull.  
  
"We should get lost?" finished Dek, raising an eyebrow. He didn't move from the doorway.  
  
"I've been doing some research on your work," said Dawn. "I'm very concerned that someone wants you and your research gone." Lydecker leaned out of the door frame looked both ways down the hall.  
  
"If this is about the office break-in two days ago, I'm not worried." The man took a few photos from his desk and stuffed them into a green knapsack.  
  
"What was missing?" asked Dawn.  
  
"Just my computers and some notes. They made a big mess, and my students and I are just getting things sorted out again."  
  
"In my opinion, there is a credible threat on your life." Lydecker stood with his arms crossed, facing Hayworth at his desk.  
  
"Dawn, how do you know Mike?" asked Hayworth, frowning at her. "And why do you trust his opinion?"  
  
"Look, we think that if you'd just stay some place safe for a day or two, we can figure out who it is, and why," Dawn protested. She had no idea how they were going to do that.   
  
"I have important things to do." Hayworth zipped the bag and slid back his chair. "We are shutting down the excavation for the season, and I need to be there."  
  
"If you don't mind," said Dek, facing the hall again. "We'd like to see your dig site."  
  
"Fine, I can't stop you two idiots from following me around." Hayworth stood up. "Nothing is going to happen, and you will find that archeology is incredibly boring."  
  
When the three of them got out to the parking lot, they found that the sky had clouded over, and a light but cold rain was being driven by the wind. Dr. Hayworth headed for a red Volkswagen microbus. Dawn noticed the rainbow sheen of leaking oil on the wet blacktop under the vehicle.  
  
"No," said Dek to the professor. "We're not taking that. Dawn, you're driving."  
  
****  
  
At Hayworth's direction, Dawn headed East on the freeway, out of town, into the mountains. The clouds and rain shadowed everything with grey, even the last few stubborn leaves on the trees. The weeds in the median looked old and tired.  
  
"We've got an hour's drive before our next turn," Hayworth said, feeling wedged between the two of them on the seat.  
  
"What are we going to do?" asked Dawn.  
  
"That depends on what we find when we get to Hayworth's dig site." Mike started pulling things out of the pockets of his jacket.  
  
The scrape of metal on metal attracted Hayworth's attention. The man was thumbing shiny brass cylinders into the grey metal shape of a . . . pistol clip. "9 mm JHP" he read from the end of the open cardboard box.  
  
"When did you get a gun?" asked the girl on his left, with no sign of surprise in her voice.  
  
"A certain security guard wasn't using it anymore." The full magazine went into Mike's jacket pocket, and an empty one came out. "I did pick up a couple of spare magazines and more ammo, though." The second full magazine went back into a pocket, and he put the cardboard box with the last of the cartridges into the glove compartment.  
  
"Oh," she said. "That means it's been in my apartment for two weeks now without you bothering to mention it to me?"   
  
"Great," thought Hayworth. "I don't have to worry about the bus breaking down, but I've probably just hitched a ride with a couple of serial killers."   
***  
  
Dawn relaxed as the road wound up into the hills. Two lanes of blacktop headed off into the mountains. Bare, damp Winter trees and brush were crowding the gravel shoulder of the highway. Traffic was light this far away from the city. Her two passengers were riding in silence.  
  
"Stupid bastard!" snapped Dawn, as a black SUV overtook and swerved into her lane. She stomped on the pedal, and listened to the brakes squeal. "Put on your glasses or something." Now it was ahead of her, and weaving across both lanes.   
  
"It's hostile, Dawn." Dek, from his seat next to the window.  
  
"Yeah, well I'm feeling pretty hostile after that." She didn't like that sort of near miss. They always left her feeling shaky for half an hour afterwards.  
  
"I think I recognized the driver. And that's a scrape down the left side." Dek's calm voice didn't make Dawn feel any better. "Trying to kill us hostile."  
  
"Shit!" yelled Dawn as the SUV's brake lights lit up. She yanked the wheel left, and felt gravel under the tires as truck reached the opposite shoulder. Much more carefully, she urged it back onto the pavement and back across the oncoming lane, now ahead of the other vehicle.   
  
"It's time to increase someone else's stress level," offered Dek. She glanced over to see him kneeling on the floor, back against the dashboard. She heard him run the window down, and looked back to see him shoulder against the door. Both his hands were wrapped around a pistol, and braced against the back edge of the door frame.  
  
The SUV was gaining on them again. She heard two shots in quick succession, and something metal bouncing around inside the cab, but it didn't seem to be as important as the right turn coming up.  
  
"I'm calling the police," said Hayworth. Dawn could hear the tones of a cell phone dialing as she swung the truck into a tight turn, wheels just over the white line. The big SUV roared by on the left, swinging wide.  
  
"Don't!" growled Dek. "The police will just get here in time to ID the bodies." He wasn't trying to shoot any more. The pistol was in his left hand, and he had a grip on Hayworth's wrist, and was slamming the phone on the dash, trying to dislodge it from his hand.  
  
"Are you nuts?" demanded Hayworth.  
  
"Put down the phone or I'm going to use you as a speed bump." The phone fell to the floor, and Lydecker twisted himself around to aim forward.  
  
Two more shots, painfully loud over the wind noise, and Dawn saw the right rear tire go flat.  
  
She floored the accelerator, and passed the bigger vehicle on the left. The tach needle flirted with the red line.  
  
"Steady," said Dek, just barely audible over the wind noise, and now facing backwards again.  
  
"Can't do that," she thought, letting the truck slow to be ready as the road curved left. The truck's rear tires slid outward on the rain-slick pavement as she entered the curve, but she kept control. "Don't roll it, Dawn."  
  
The truck was back on the straightaway. Dawn gave it more gas, and glanced in the rear view mirror again.  
  
One more shot, and the SUV turned crossways on the road, smoke coming from the ruined tires.  
  
"Pay attention," she ordered herself, and saw the double yellow line curving right again. She braked sharply and swung the truck around to follow.  
  
"Pull over," said Dek quietly. He made the gun disappear, and picked up Hayworth's cell phone from under the seat.  
  
She coasted to a stop on the gravel shoulder. Dek opened the door and jumped out. "Back in a few." He was pulling on a pair of gloves as he turned and disappeared into the brush and trees.  
  
Dawn looked down and realized that her hands hurt because she still had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel.   
  
"That Mike guy is trouble," Hayworth was saying. "Those military types don't have any respect for research, or human life, or any of the important things."  
  
"Who's Mike?" wondered Dawn silently as she opened and closed her hands. She could still feel tension in her arms and across her shoulders, but it would go away if she just sat here long enough.   
  
"There are lots of ways to deal with problems without shooting," continued Hayworth, and Dawn realized he was talking about Dek.  
  
"I think we just saved your ass," said Dawn. She opened her window, hoping to get some air that didn't smell of fear. Little bits of rain blew in, and she could smell the mud and rain.  
  
Eventually the professor ran out of unkind things to say about 'Mike,' and the two of them sat watching the rain bounce off the hood of the truck.  
  
Motion from the trees caught her eye, and she watched Dek stroll around the front, eyes focused at the level of her front bumper. He stopped at her door, and pulled something rectangular out of a pocket.  
  
"See if you recognize any of these, Dr. Hayworth," he said, reaching past Dawn to hand over the item. Hayworth flipped it open. It was a photo album, with a picture labeled "Hayworth" on top.  
  
"That was some good driving, Dawn." His hand was on her arm, two fingers on her brown wool sweater, the others against the back of her hand. The light glinted off the ring, and she remembered her hurried research to find out if there was a woman somewhere who would want to know Donald Lydecker was still alive.   
  
"Not only are we still right-side up, but you didn't even let him scratch the paint." Dawn realized that she hadn't noticed the creases at the corners of his eyes because she hadn't ever seen him smile before.  
  
She smiled back. "Why do I feel like I've just won the lottery?" she wondered.   
  
"We need to call the police," said Hayworth. "You've got my phone." Dek's hand slid off her arm.  
  
Dek circled around the back of the truck, and climbed in. "Sure," he said, handing it over. "But it's too late to do any good."  
  
Dawn put the truck in 'drive' and put them back on the empty road.  
  
The professor had reached the back of the little album. He slid one of the pictures out of its sleeve, and examined the back. He turned to Dek, and studied his profile for a long moment.  
  
"So you're Lydecker!"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Amie always said you were a total asshole and she was looking forward to your funeral." Hayworth handed the little book of pictures back to Dek.  
  
"I'm sorry that didn't work out for her. She was a valuable member of the genetics team."  
  
"They never did tell me what happened."  
  
"There was a good reason for the closed coffin. She was in the wrong place when the last of the X-2s tried to break out."  
  
The professor turned towards her. "Dawn, did you know that your friend is the project manager for X-5? He knows where the bodies are buried, literally and figuratively."  
  
"Dek?" she asked. Why wasn't she surprised?  
  
"Was the project manager. Notice that I'm in that little book of targets."  
  
"What are you up to now?" inquired the professor.  
  
"Trying to stay alive, and trying to figure out what was really going on."  
  
"If you don't know what was happening, no one does."  
  
"I'm not so sure about that. I recently saw a genetic analysis of one of my Xs that differs substantially from our specifications. I think Sandeman's group might have had something up their sleeve."  
  
"You weren't real popular with them."  
  
"Do you have any of Amie's notes or files that escaped the cleanup team after she died?" asked Lydecker.  
  
Dawn felt the silence like a physical weight. She watched the rain streaming off the windshield, the silver-grey trunks of the birch trees whipping by, and the distant hills gliding by in the mist.   
  
"Dawn, I've got a couple of things you might be interested in," said Hayworth suddenly. "I'll give them to a friend who can meet you at a party tomorrow. I'd bring them myself, but I'm going to be taking your advice and leaving the country for a couple of weeks."  
  
"Thank you," said Dek.  
  
"Lydecker, I'm not doing this for you."  
  
"Well, that killed that conversation," thought Dawn. 


	7. Two Two Three

"Turn on to that dirt road," said Hayworth.  
  
A few minutes of careful attention to avoiding the larger mud puddles brought them to the end of the road, where it widened out into a parking area. A couple of cars were parked in some of the less soggy areas at the far end.  
  
Dawn found a spot that wasn't going to sink the truck axle deep in mud, and shut off the engine. Lydecker got out, and held the door for Hayworth, who was doing his best to ignore him.  
  
She watched her feet and managed to find some solid ground between the puddles.  
  
"I'll get one of my students to take me home, thanks," said Hayworth.  
  
"You're very welcome," snapped Dek. The passenger side door slammed, and loud, sharp sound echoed oddly.   
  
"That was a shot!" realized Dawn.  
  
She looked across the truck, and couldn't see either one of the men. Then she saw Dek, heading down the slope on the other side of the parking lot, moving at a run.  
  
Dawn picked up her feet and followed. As she rounded the truck, she saw that a muddy Hayworth was just getting up. Dek was just flashes of motion between scrubby trees. She got her feet wet in a small stream, and then pounded up the slope on the other side, branches tearing at her clothes.  
  
When she caught up, Dek was standing with hands on his knees, head down.  
  
"Find the brass!" he ordered breathlessly, looking up at her for just a moment, then back at the soggy leaves. She glanced around, noticing the impression from someone laying in the leaves, and couple of dead branches leaning against a tree.  
  
  
"Somewhere over here," he said, waving her over.  
  
She saw a glimpse of yellow metal next to a tree root. She picked it up, turned it over in her hand and read "Winchester .223 MATCH" from the base. The empty case was the size of her little finger.  
  
  
"It's still warm," she said, and dropped it into his hand as he stood up.  
  
"I have a nasty suspicion that we are dealing with an amateur." He pocketed it. Dawn decided that she didn't ever want to see that expression directed at her.   
  
"Oh, Dawn?" he added. "The next time I do something really bone-head stupid like charging a sniper- don't follow me." His expression hadn't changed.  
  
****  
  
  
Lydecker crouched behind the sniper's blind of dead branches. He could see the entire parking area, the entrance to a shelter, and the top edge of the excavation. In some ways, it was a beautiful choice of location. Whoever he was, the gunman could have snuck in without being spotted by anyone at the dig, or anyone on the road.   
  
On the other hand, he examined the empty brass. Snipers didn't use .223. They were much happier with .308, or even fifty caliber. Large bullets went further and made bigger holes. Not that .223 was anything to take lightly on the receiving end. Competitive high-power shooters, though. . . . "More to the point, why did he run away instead of taking another shot?"  
  
"Dawn, come here a minute." Lydecker considered the impressions in the leaves. A large flat area would correspond with the body of a right handed rifleman, with the small divot nearest to the blind coming from the left elbow, and the other one from the right elbow. The scrape through the leaves further away would be where the shooter moved his foot while getting the position lined up with the target, whoever that was. "Have you ever played Twister?"  
  
Dawn nodded, and the corners of her mouth twitched up in a smirk for just a moment before her eyebrows raised for a question.  
  
"Lie down with your left elbow here," he told her, pointing. "Try not to disturb the leaves. And your body needs to be there."  
  
Dek watched her eyes flicker over the area. She put her palms flat on the ground, and let herself settle slowly onto the shooter's print. She placed her elbow carefully, and looked up at him with puzzled blue eyes.  
  
Over the next few minutes, he coached Dawn into a textbook prone firing position for a rifle. He could tell she was getting impatient. He remembered how much the X-5s fidgeted when they were learning to shoot at eight years old.  
  
"What am I doing?" she asked without moving. There was tension in her voice, and he could see that she was getting tired of holding the position.  
  
"Firing an imaginary rifle," he said, reaching over to turn her left hand palm up to support the stock, and curled her right hand around to reach the imaginary trigger. "Now, look at how your hands are lined up. Where is that rifle pointing?"  
"Just to the right of my truck," said Dawn softly. "Where you and Professor Hayworth were standing."  
  
  
Lydecker looked at Dawn's feet. The toe of her left boot was scraping into the leaves a few inches beyond the mark that was already there.  
  
"That's what I needed to know." He tapped her shoulder. "The shooter is shorter than you are, probably by a couple of inches." She rolled onto her left side and stretched, obliterating the last of the print in the leaves.  
  
"What happened to your jacket?" asked Dawn, reaching up to tug on his sleeve and putting the tip her finger through a small hole. He looked, and found a second hole, with grey traces of burned powder.  
  
"I'm tired of being a target," he snarled. He imagined the path of the bullet through his sleeve. Seven or eight inches to his right, and he would have been instantly dead. Just a little twitch for the shooter, but the difference between a hole in his left sleeve, and a hole in his heart. He didn't have any doubt where the sniper had been aiming.  
  
****  
  
Dawn felt the cold and wet from the leaves soaking through her jeans. It felt good to get out of that weird, lopsided position. She rolled onto her stomach and stretched again, then dragged her hands back through the leaves to get them under her shoulders to push herself up off the ground.  
  
Her right hand touched something that wasn't soggy leaves. Whatever it was, the surface was made of leather, with a little bit of metal, and she wrapped her hand around it and shook it clear.  
  
"What the Hell is a gun doing here?" she thought, almost dropping it.  
  
"We've got one weird sniper." Dek took it out of her hand and pulled it out of the holster. The magazine dropped free of the grip, and he turned it in his hand and snapped it back in.  
  
She pushed herself to her feet as he finished whatever noisy fiddling he was doing with the gun.  
  
"9mm HK pistol. Someone with good taste, but no sense." He put the weapon back into leather. "If you've got a rifle, why bother with this?"  
  
She shrugged. "Why are there two people after Hayworth?"  
  
"This one's interested in me. A six inch miss from a hundred yards I can believe. Hayworth was almost three feet away from me."  
  
"I thought you were on the same list as Hayworth. Is there anyone else?" Dawn tried to imagine how many more people might think Dek should be dead.  
  
It was his turn to shrug. "You carry this one," he told her. "If you need to use it, point first, snap off the safety, then squeeze the trigger. It's set up to clip inside the waistband on your left side."   
  
Dawn accepted the weapon, and decided that there really wasn't any other way to carry it. She pulled down her sweater to cover the grip. "I survived this long with out carrying a gun," she thought. "I am going to take this off the instant I get home."   
  
They picked their way back down the hill to the parking lot.  
  
"I'm tired of this Rambo shit," growled Lydecker as they splashed through the creek. "I'm not fucking 25 anymore."   
  
"Why not?" asked Dawn flippantly. Then her feet quit moving as she realized exactly what she meant.   
  
"I can't believe I just said that," she thought. "I was born in 1995." She was a bit relieved that he didn't seem to have heard her.  
  
*****  
  
The sound track from a cowboy movie was leaking through the walls from the next room. Hoof beats and gunfire worked on her nerves. She remembered the sound of a dozen nine-year olds running in hard-soled boots, and felt the beginning of tears.  
  
The bottle in front of her was almost empty. She could remember breaking the seal and opening it, a while ago. What she couldn't remember was when she'd stopped pacing, and taken a seat at the table.   
  
The rifle was back in its case, under the unmade bed, and her boots stood in front of the door, with dried mud slowly flaking off them onto the mauve motel carpet.  
  
"You panicked," she said out loud. "Twice." Maybe another swallow would blur out those memories.   
  
"You left a weapon behind." She set the bottle down with a jolt, and watched the ripples bounce around inside the glass.  
  
"You missed. What is wrong with you?" She sniffled, and brushed the back of her hand across a damp cheek.   
  
"And you're going to feel like crap tomorrow morning." One more, and that was the last of the alcohol. The empty joined the line of others. Six weeks here, and the empties were marching most of the way across the wall.   
  
"What's tonight's scheduled nightmare?" she asked herself, getting up unsteadily. She shut off the light and sat on the bed. Her clothes made a pile on the floor, and she climbed under the covers, naked except for the knife.  
  
Her dream self with the AR-15 glided through the woods like a shadow, while her body relaxed in sleep. Her dream self smelled the oil on the rifle, the wet air, and the fallen leaves, as she lay on the damp ground. The weight of the dream rifle settled on her left hand, against her shoulder. The dream girl took aim, as the two passengers climbed out of the truck. The one didn't matter, the other drew her total attention. The man looked older than she remembered, but the frown was familiar, and in the dream he looked straight at her like he could see her.  
  
Her dream self held her breath, and took up the little bit of slack in the trigger. The target slammed the door, throwing his body into it. In the dream she could feel his anger like a shock wave, and she tensed, shifting the rifle and releasing the shot.  
  
She knew instantly that she'd missed. He was running towards her through the trees, fallen twigs crunching under his feet. Panic. She fled, dream-slow, with the rifle in her hands.  
  
The panic was still there when she woke up in the darkness. The cowboy movie was over, and all was quiet except for someone snoring, and the traffic, and a dog somewhere.  
  
"At least that wasn't the bad nightmare," she told herself. "There wasn't any snow." 


	8. Tango for three

Chapter 8   
  
  
The diner was dark inside, even though the sun was high in the sky. There was an empty seat at the counter. She could feel the toxic remnants of last night crawling around in her head. She wished her liver would hurry up and get rid of them. "Coffee," she said as the waitress handed her a menu.  
  
"You can still go home," she mused, silently. "They will ask where you've been, and you will ignore them. All you have to do is give up on killing the bastard, put everything in the car, and drive."   
  
The waitress was back with coffee. "Would you give me another minute please?" she asked. She hadn't even looked at the menu yet. She was still seeing Lydecker get out of the green truck. The details were burned into her brain. The girl's sweater was brown. He was wearing a hunter's cammo jacket, which was already spotted with rain. There were two bumper stickers on the truck, one on each side of a Washington license plate. She could even see the lettering on the plate.  
  
"License plate." She must have said it out loud, because the waitress pulled her pen and pad out of her pocket, and gave her a confused frown.  
  
"Um. I'll have the pancakes," she said, making herself smile.  
  
Now she needed a good story so the Department of Motor Vehicles would tell her who owned the truck, and where they lived.  
  
******  
  
Dawn sat at her computer, and deliberately ignored the random piles of clothing that decorated her bedroom. Most of the afternoon had been spent trying to figure out what to wear.  
  
The morning's activities, on the other hand, had been effective. She clicked through an enormous list of web search results. According to Dek, she was looking for someone who competed with 'high-power' rifle and any sort of pistol competition. She had no idea how she was going to find out how tall someone was from a match score bulletin.  
  
A picture caught her eye. "Hey Dek!" she called. "Come see this!" She zoomed in on the picture to highlight the three smiling pistol shooters in the center.  
  
Dek leaned over her shoulder, and whistled.  
  
"So that's his taste," thought Dawn, frowning at him.  
  
He looked puzzled for a moment, then the corners of his mouth turned up, and he raised an eyebrow. "What do you take me for, Dawn? She's probably fifteen. Besides, that's not the weapon we're looking for."  
  
Dawn looked back at the picture. The girl in the center did look very young, and she was wearing a black baseball cap with "HK" in red lettering.  
  
"She's pretty tough, though," said Dek. "That's a Mark 23. It's a really big .45. The pistol we're looking for is smaller."  
  
"I wasn't looking at the gun," she replied, tapping her fingers on the mouse pad. "She's the girl I met at the library. Do you think she was carrying that gun?"  
  
"If she was, you would have noticed. Like I said, that's a really big pistol, and hard to hide." He turned and headed back into the living room. "If we're going to be on time, you have half an hour to get dressed."  
  
Dawn closed the picture and went back to the article. "Seventeen year old Evelyn Walker beat out last year's champion to take first place in. . . " she skimmed through the match results. "Brian Evanston says 'Until she goes off to college, I'm going to need to get used to second place. She's a natural.'" Dawn did the math: Evelyn must be almost 20 now.  
  
"I'll have to get back to that later," she said to herself. "Now, I've got two bad choices."  
  
The two dresses on the bed were different as night and day, and both wrong.   
  
The one was sleek, short, and black. Dawn loved it with really tall shoes, and it always got her lots of male attention. The problem was, she couldn't sit down without creasing the skirt. She didn't have any idea how long they were going to need to stay at a party that might not be any fun, anyway, and the shoes always made her feet hurt.  
  
Mom had picked out the other dress for her. Dawn had worn it exactly once, because Mom insisted. It was made from satin and heavy lace, a cream color almost intense enough to be yellow. The shoes that went with that were boring tan t-strap shoes with square, sensible two inch heels. To add insult to injury, there was a totally useless little round hat to match. She had the hairpins to hold it on her head, too.  
  
"Fine," she muttered. "I'll be able to stand, and I'll be able to sit. Why aren't sexy clothes ever comfortable?"  
  
****  
  
They parked two blocks away and walked. The house turned out to be surprisingly easy to locate. Light streamed from a row of large windows that let him see that a polka was underway, even before they got close enough to hear the music.  
  
"You are going to be polite and social," Lydecker said as they approached the front door. "Introduce yourself to everyone. Don't ask any questions, just wait for someone to contact you." He was going to try to stay out of the way.   
  
"I'm fine with parties, Dek. Don't worry about it." Well, actually Dawn looked just a little bit jumpy, but there was nothing he could do about that.  
  
He took her coat, and watched her head for the thickest part of the crowd in the living room. The hem of the dress swung with her walk. From the back, the most dramatic feature was the neckline, which exposed her spine almost to waist level.  
  
He imagined her reaction if he were to run fingers down that expanse of smooth skin. Was she ticklish? He didn't know. It wouldn't be hard to find out. Dawn had been dropping little hints. "No reason to take advantage of her remarkably poor taste in men." He had to wonder if she was really serious.  
  
"On the other hand, she's put up with a lot." Dek remembered how little success he'd had controlling his irritation when he found himself in trapped someone else's place. He'd been barely able to stand, but that hadn't kept him from wanting to leave. Real sleep had alternated with pretending to sleep. He hadn't been able to decide if it was malingering or gaining a tactical advantage. Dawn had been incredibly patient.   
  
He imagined a tiny cartoon devil sitting on his shoulder. "Why not indulge her?" said the cartoon, with a leer. "You know you've got something she wants."  
  
****  
  
She fit the rifle case at the back of the trunk, and added a medium sized duffle bag. A cardboard box held more ammuniton for the handgun, the one that she didn't have anymore. She made herself relax and un-clench her teeth.  
  
"Don't give up now!" she told herself. "You are going to make him pay."  
  
But she couldn't help thinking about where she had hidden all the ID cards that said "Evelyn Walker."  
  
****  
  
Dawn was getting bored with small talk. She caught a glimpse of Dek. "I wonder if he realizes how hot he looks in a midnight blue tuxedo." She smiled to herself. "That's Dek, girl. You can bet he knows *exactly* how hot he looks." It was really too bad he wasn't doing it to impress her. She turned her attention back to her conversation with the man with the burgundy bow-tie and the bad hairpiece.  
  
That bit of social tedium came to a successful close, and she scanned the room for other party guests that she hadn't chatted with yet.  
  
"Do you dance, Dawn?" asked Dek, from just behind her.  
  
"You mean ballroom? No." She turned to face him, and just missed getting her feet tangled with each other.  
  
"Have you ever tried?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Then the matter is still open." He was smiling again, and she found herself following him into the ball room.  
  
Her first impression was the vastness of the oak floor. A full fifty feet of smooth wood ran from the windows at the front of the house to the French doors at the back. The room was about half that wide, with windows and mirrors alternating on the far wall. The archway behind her lead back to the entry way and the living room. Pairs of dancers were moving off the floor, others moving on. The two of them wound up near a corner. Dawn hoped the were out of the way.  
  
Dek lifted her left hand to the top of his shoulder, and tucked his right hand just above the curve of her waist. "Stay tense enough that you can tell which way I'm going," he told her, taking her other hand. "It's going to be your basic waltz. You start by taking one long step back with your left foot."  
  
"Right," said Dawn, and hoped that she wasn't going to make a total fool of herself.  
  
The music started, and she could hear the three counts per measure. And then they were moving. Long step back with on the left, followed by two small steps. Somehow they were facing in the other direction now, and she took a long step forward, right foot. She hadn't stepped on Dek or anyone else yet!  
  
She let herself relax a little, and discovered that if she wasn't thinking too hard about it, she knew which way she was supposed to be going. The turns worked better if she picked up her heels a little.  
  
Dawn quit trying to watch where they were going, and the walls spun by in a blur.  
  
****  
  
She parked the car behind a large van with a ladder on the roof. "I'm packed, I've got gas," she whispered. "I just have to finish the job."  
  
A quick walk in the chilly air brought her to a large, run-down house with an overgrown yard. A couple of lights were on, at the second floor. The green truck was not parked outside, but a red and white Ford Pinto was up on blocks.  
  
She snuck around to the back of the house, and forced open one of the basement windows. The basement was dirty and packed with junk of every description. She had just enough light to make her way to the stairs and up to the ground level without knocking anything over.  
  
The first floor was silent, and she opened the door to "Office" without any trouble. She let it latch noiselessly behind her, and slowly scanned the filing cabinets looking for tenant files.  
  
A few minutes later, she'd determined that a Dawn lived in one of the second floor apartments, a Charles in the other, and the attic room was not rented out right now.  
  
"I guess I'll check out the attic while I wait," she thought, pocketing the key to Dawn's apartment, and another to the unit on the third floor.  
  
***  
  
In the middle of the second waltz, Dawn discovered that she could close her eyes and still know exactly where to put her feet.  
  
"Dizzy?" asked Dek.  
  
"No, I just wanted to see what it was like."   
  
"Very trusting." She was amused to hear the slightest hint of laughter in his voice.  
  
"You haven't run me into anyone yet." She opened her eyes, looked over her shoulder, and saw their reflection in the window glass. At first, she wasn't sure it was the two of them. But that was Dek, so the girl must be her. The dress was confusing her. It looked totally different in motion. The skirt swung away from her legs, and looked dramatic instead of dowdy.  
  
****  
The door to the third floor apartment was actually on the second floor. She opened it with the key, and revealed a dark, dusty, flight of stairs. She closed the door behind her, and climbed the stairs.  
  
The ceiling was the shape of the underside of the roof. It was highest in the center where the two gables, front and back, met the ridge. There were windows on every wall except the one facing the road, and they let enough light in to see what sort of junk the last tenant left behind.  
  
One small door opened into a kitchen the size of a closet. The other one revealed a bathroom of similar proportions. She could hear the muffled chatter of the people downstairs, but nothing from Dawn's.  
  
She lay down on the floor. The wood was hard, smooth and cold. She tucked her hands into her pockets, and tried to relax for the long wait.  
  
****  
  
"May I cut in?" asked a man with round wire frame glasses and a dark mustache. The woman he was dancing with had short, businesslike brown hair, but an exotic-looking teal silk dress with gold embroidery.  
  
Dek nodded to the man, and the two couples paused in their dancing, and re-assembled themselves. Dek was now dancing away with the woman, and Dawn with the interloper.  
  
"I'll catch up with you later, Dawn," Dek said over the woman's shoulder.  
  
"I'm a friend of Sam's," said the man as the two of them got back into the dance. "You should probably call me Vic, unless you are particularly good at pronouncing Indian names." Dawn shook her head. She could smell pipe tobacco, cedar and mothballs.  
  
"I'm sorry I'm a bit out of practice," he said sheepishly. Dawn found that she had some trouble figuring out where to go, but if she paid attention no one would get hurt.   
  
The music ended, and Dawn followed Vic into the kitchen, then up the stairs. The two of them found chairs in a little room that must be an office, because it was stuffed with bookshelves and computer things.  
  
"Sam asked me to thank you for your advice," Vic said, "and to give you these." He reached into his jacket, and she thought for a moment of Dek, and guns. The flash of metal in his hands was something else, though.  
  
Dawn accepted two writeable CDs, in plastic sleeves. Someone had scrawled "5/7/99 1 of 2" on one, and "5/7/99 2 of 2" on the other.  
  
"Tell Dr. Hayworth that I appreciate this," she said, turning the discs in her hand. "Did he say what was on them?"  
  
"Not a word," said Vic. "He just said that he was heading out of the country."   
  
"I'm glad Sam is being careful," said Dawn as Vic turned to leave.  
  
She spent quite a few minutes in the bathroom. She took off the hat, fit the CDs into the top of it, and re-pinned it as carefully as she could.  
  
*****  
"You can't do it," said the voice. She was sitting in a plastic chair, and her feet didn't reach the floor. She looked down at her hands, clenched around the grip of a full size Beretta.   
  
"I owe you!" she wanted to shout. "What did you do to them?" She tried, but she couldn't lift the pistol, and couldn't lift her head.  
  
She woke up, and opened her eyes to look up at the dingy ceiling sloping up over her head. She was panting, and her pulse echoed in her ears.  
  
It was getting dark, outside, and here in the empty apartment.  
  
She shifted to try and find a more comfortable position on the cold floor. The boards squeaked as she shifted her weight. She could hear kitchen sounds from Dawn's neighbor, but still no sound from Dawn's.  
  
"Max wouldn't quit now," she thought. "Zack wouldn't quit now. You can't either."  
  
*****  
  
Dek looked up at her from the bottom of the stairs. "Are you ready to try something hard?"  
  
Dawn felt her ears turn red. "He didn't mean that the way it sounded!" she told herself silently.  
  
"I mean," he continued, with a quick flash of a smile "now that you've got the general idea, we can try some more complicated steps." Dawn decided that Dek had an evil sense of humor.  
  
*****  
  
She heard footsteps from downstairs, and was instantly awake.  
  
"It's time to find out if you are really a failure," she thought.   
  
*****  
  
Dawn listened to the drive hum as her computer tried to load from one of those ancient CDs. As she expected, it was encrypted, but there were a couple of different ways to deal with that.  
  
"Can you just do a straight copy?" asked Dek, from the living room. She heard first one shoe, then the other fall to the floor.  
  
"Sure can," she said, and dropped a blank into the drive.   
  
Dek padded in, stocking foot, and undid the bow tie while he looked over her shoulder. He took a quick glance at the screen, then turned away. Dawn wondered what happened to her happy, charming dance partner. The cool, all-business Dek was back. She wasn't sure if she liked that. "It's almost as if I was just a cover story," she grumbled to herself. "If I'm going to be used for something, shouldn't I get a say in what?"  
  
She looked up at Dek. "Why haven't you tried to take me to bed?" she asked, trying to end the suspense like ripping off a band-aid. He set the Glock down on the corner of the dresser and sighed.  
  
"Because I can't risk having you decide that I'm a dirty old man," he answered, turning to face her. "The two of us together will be able to crack *that* faster than either of us alone." He nodded towards the computer.  
  
"Do I seem like the kind of person who will go off the deep end instead of saying 'No, thanks'?" He was worried about offending her?  
  
"No. I also don't want to give you any ideas about some kind of mercy fuck." He frowned. "I'm not going to accept that. Ever. I still have a few standards left."   
  
"I have standards, too!" protested Dawn.   
  
"Then you need to decide what you are willing to risk, and make me an offer." He had his hands in his pockets, and no trace of a smile.  
  
"Risk?" What sort of mind games was he playing now?  
  
"Well, depending on what you are looking for, there are the standard set of physical risks." He shrugged. "What you really need to think about is: What if I turn you down, or what if I agree, but reality just doesn't measure up to what you are expecting?"  
  
"So I need to make you an offer?" Dawn wondered if he wanted her confused, or he just didn't realize quite how unusual this conversation was. She had only had to hint, before.  
  
"Doesn't have to be just one offer," he said with a smile. "I'm willing to stand here all night and turn you down."  
  
"Arrogant bastard," thought Dawn. "I want my tango partner back." An idea formed. She was just going to have to accept the risks. It was the only way to find out.  
  
"OK," she heard herself say. "I want to compare the reality of a kiss, with the imaginary one." She glanced at the computer, which was methodically copying the second CD, and got to her feet.  
  
"If that's what it takes to make you happy."   
  
"Actually, I want you to shut up and quit asking me difficult questions." Dawn met him half way. She was surprised to find that she was exactly his height, with her heels still on.  
  
Dawn touched his cheek, and shivered, remembering the dark, wet sand under her boots, and the shape of a man's body in her truck's headlights. "I thought he was dead," she remembered. The warmth of his skin reminded her that she had been wrong.  
He closed the distance between them. She felt the pressure of one hand against the bare skin of her arm, and the other against the side of her neck. His thumb slid along the side of her jaw, and she tipped her head towards his fingers.   
  
His lips met hers, slowly, and she could almost taste caution. Even the slight contact between them held her attention, and she wondered if it was possible to die from frustration. He seemed to make up his mind, and things changed. Dek's mouth moved against hers, and his hand behind her head prevented her escape, even if she'd been thinking of it. "Frustration is not what I need to worry about," she realized.  
  
"So what are your findings?" His voice was cool, but now she knew what was behind it.  
  
"Reality is winning, but I need to verify my experimental results." Dawn tried to match his tone, as if she were speaking of something far away, and of no importance. She was quite sure that she wasn't successful.  
  
"I'm always eager," purred Lydecker, "to gratify a woman's scientific curiosity."   
  
*****  
  
She could tell from the whispered voices filtering through the floor from downstairs that she wasn't listening to foreplay anymore. She had never really considered that there would be any woman, anywhere, who would be willing to take Lydecker to bed with her. She found that the reality was a bit disturbing.   
  
"The time to strike," she reminded herself, "is when the enemy is occupied by other things."   
  
She slid her hand under the sleeve of her coat, and slowly peeled the tape off her arm. The ceramic knife was almost black in the dim light. She mentally reviewed all the ways to kill someone instantly and quietly with a blade.   
Several of them were entirely suitable for a knife that would slice through meat quickly and smoothly, but chip or break against bone.  
  
"Start with whoever is on top," she thought, "and the body will pin the other one for just long enough to finish the job. No witnesses." Two bodies worth of blood would be an enormous pool. The idea made her feel ill, and she was glad she hadn't eaten since breakfast.  
  
When she got to her feet, she felt dizzy. "Too long in one place," she told herself. The noise from downstairs continued. The little bit of squeaking from the floor clearly hadn't disturbed them.  
  
She decided that a little bit of speed was more important than total quiet. The floorboards creaked twice more on her way to the top of the stairs. This end of the room was darker, and the bottom steps were totally obscured. She felt with her toe for the edge of the top step.  
  
"Lydecker's going to pay for all of them," she whispered. Her other foot reached for the next step. She could still see the dark shape of the blade against the shadows, and she imagined blood.  
  
Her fingers opened, as if they weren't taking orders from her brain anymore. The black knife spun end over end, bounced once, then shattered at the bottom. She could hear it turn to slivers of ceramic. It sounded like ice breaking.  
  
She sat on the top step, opening and closing her hands. She watched her fingers extend, then close into fists, and felt tendons sliding under her skin. Everything was under control again.  
  
"What is wrong with me?" she asked the empty stairs. 


	9. Terminal ballistics

DATE: 3/19/03  
SUMMARY: Final chapter of "Dawn Takes In a Stray"  
SPOILERS: none.  
DISCLAIMER: Dark Angel characters and universe belong to Cameron, Eglee, and FOX. I'm not making any money.  
ARCHIVE: List archives and by submission; others ask. Do not repost   
without permission.  
THANKS: To Dawn, for letting me put her likeness in this story, and for Megan for beta-reading, and many helpful comments.  
  
Chapter 9. "Terminal ballistics"  
  
Terminal Ballistics: the study of what happens to a projectile when it hits a target.  
  
****  
  
Lydecker opened his eyes and stared at the dust hanging in the sun-lit air, light against the shadowed ceiling. He could only remember a fragment of the dream. It had something to do with the way the edge of Dawn's tan curved over her hip bone, and that didn't make sense anymore now that he was definitely awake.  
  
He decided it was a nice change of subject matter. He had gotten used to waking up from dreams of being trapped at the turbulent surface of cold water. This was Dawn's bed, so it made a certain amount of sense that his dreams would be different, even though she wasn't here.  
  
He could hear a drawer open in the kitchen, and the metallic sound of spoons hammering against each other. "Coffee and breakfast. A good idea, even if I have to cook it myself."  
  
*****  
  
Dawn tried to sort through the junk that was stacked next to her computer. She found a couple of pens, and tested them against the corner of a scrap print-out. Every single one of them was dry. She smelled coffee, and looked up to see Dek smiling at her.  
  
"I need a bunch of words, Dek." Dawn handed him a pad of paper, and a mechanical pencil. "One of the things my code-cracker does is look for words or phrases in the decrypted text. If you can make a list of things that might be in these files, it will help identify the output."  
  
Dek crossed the room, put his coffee mug down on the window sill, and moved the chair from under the window.  
  
"Don't use that one!" she exclaimed. "One of the legs is about to come off, and I need to glue it." He nudged the chair with his foot, then sat down on the corner of the bed.  
  
"I want you to mail the original CDs to a friend of mine." He scribbled something on the top page, and ripped it off the pad. "We can trust him to pass on the information to a couple of other people who might need to know."  
  
"OK, I can do that. Won't go anywhere till Monday, though." She shoved the address into the pocket of her jeans, and sorted through the top drawer of her dresser to find a matched pair of socks. She was a bit surprised to see the square black shape of the Glock still on top.  
  
"That's fine. Just get one of the copies out of this building." He tapped the pencil nervously against the bed frame.  
  
*****  
  
"I can do this!" she told herself. The pieces of the black knife were too small to do anything other than cut her hands, but she could hear Dawn's footsteps tapping down the stairs.  
  
She could handle Lydecker alone. Lydecker, alone, was vulnerable. He was old, slow, and in the end, dead.  
  
She opened the door to the second floor landing, then closed it silently behind her.  
  
With the key to Dawn's apartment in her hand, she soundlessly inched her boots across the worn linoleum.  
******  
  
Lydecker gazed out the window. A breeze was trying to blow the damp fallen leaves off the grass, but wasn't succeeding. The coffee mug was cool in his hand, and he decided that fresh pot was more important than adding a few more keywords to the list.  
  
He turned around to see a twenty-something woman with red curls, and a firm grip on the Glock. She was straddling the chair, leaning on the back. "An amateur," he thought. "An amateur who wants to talk." If she were a professional, he would be dead already. Maybe without even noticing.  
  
"Who are you?" he asked, hoping to get a conversation going and keep it going until some sort of opening presented itself. In an ideal world, he'd find a reason for her to put the gun down. He could hear his pulse in his ears.  
  
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Cool hazel eyes, and half a smile.   
  
The Glock was still pointed at his chest, slightly to left of center. He crouched enough to set the mug on the floor, very slowly. The pistol slowly tilted, as if it were attached to him, not to her.   
  
"Ok, here is how these things are supposed to go. You tell me who you are, and that you are here to make me pay for an old mistake." That ought to start a good long discussion. If she was asking questions, she would be thinking about his answer, or her next question, or just about anything except squeezing the trigger. He remembered the hollow point ammunition he'd loaded into the magazine, and imagined the mushroom shape of the expanding bullet in his flesh.  
  
"Exactly." She reminded him of an old picture he'd seen. One where his mother was young and happy. Except the teenager who was going to be Mom had been holding a fishing rod, and a large perch, and this woman had a steady and competent grip on a firearm.  
  
"Well, I've made a whole bunch of mistakes. Do you want to tell me which mistake this is for?" He leaned against the window frame, and willed himself not to twitch. Five and one half pounds of pressure on her trigger finger would put him on the wrong end of an applied ballistics experiment. No fun - Lydecker knew from experience.  
  
"I told you, you won't believe me." Her straight, even front teeth pressed her lip.  
  
"Are you an old girlfriend?" He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "No, can't be. I keep better track than that." The Glock hadn't moved.  
  
"You want my ID?" Her lip curled, and her eyes narrowed. She used her left hand to pull her ponytail over her shoulder, and dragged the collar of her shirt down her neck. Her wrist relaxed, and now the Glock was pointed towards the floor.  
  
"She's one of my kids," he thought, startled. "But which one?" As he walked around her, he realized that the chair that Dawn had been sitting in was still in front of the computer. Which meant that the broken one was under his new acquaintance, who wanted him to read her bar code.  
  
He brushed his fingers across the back of her neck, as if to move hair aside. But that was just a distraction, and he kicked the left leg of the chair, sending it flying, and the girl tipping backwards towards him. Then the pistol was in his hands.  
  
*****  
  
She hit the floor, and felt the pistol being wrenched from her hand. She lay motionless, expecting the end. "Why does Lydecker always win?" she asked herself. She felt sure he was going to kill her, for real this time. Her fear kept her eyes closed.  
  
In the silence, she could hear his ragged breathing. No orders, no gun shots.  
  
Long ago, someone had told her "If you give up, you have already lost the fight." That someone might even have been Lydecker. Lying on the floor waiting for death was wrong. She slowly rolled over onto her stomach, and looked up, into the barrel of the pistol.  
  
"Where did you get that tattoo?" he hissed.  
  
"You should know." She felt her lower lip trembling.  
  
"The girl – the experiment – with that code is dead." Both of his hands were wrapped around the pistol. Some icy, analytical part of her brain noticed that his knuckles were white.  
  
"That's news to me." She slowly slid her hands closer to her shoulders. "Or, do you have some plans?"  
  
"That experiment was terminated in oh-nine," he insisted, less sure this time.  
  
"Nobody told me that."   
  
"I shot you!" She watched the pistol tremble in his grasp.  
  
"That's why I'm here." She could hear the front door open, and footsteps on the stairs. She held her breath, and waited for the right moment.  
  
A key turned in the lock, and she watched Lydecker's eyes flick away from her, and towards the apartment door.  
  
"All taken care of," said a girl's voice from the next room.  
  
"Get out!" he snapped, as the girl's head appeared in the bedroom door.  
  
Now! She rolled sideways and scrambled to her feet, just ahead of the Glock's muzzle. She moved towards her enemy, trapping his hand, and the gun. It was an easy setup for a simple throw.  
  
When it was finished, the gun was hers. Lydecker was face down on the floor, with one hand flat under her left foot.  
  
"I never saw the body," whispered Lydecker. "I was too busy trying to find the others." She wondered why he wasn't trying to escape.  
  
"You're Evelyn Walker," interjected Dawn, who was still standing in the doorway.  
  
"Just another fake name," she said. "Lydecker! Who am I?"  
  
"You are X-5 . . ."  
  
"Stop!" she interrupted, shifting her weight. "What's my name?"   
  
"Eva." A hoarse whisper. His shoulders shook with a deep breath. "They called you Eva when they thought I wasn't listening."   
  
She lifted her foot, and backed away. Dawn knelt next to the old man, so Eva positioned herself in the open doorway. He wasn't going to get away again.  
  
*****  
  
Lydecker stared at the caramel colored oak floor. "Pain is temporary," he reminded himself. It didn't matter now. Eventually Eva was going to figure out how to spill his blood. Not that he didn't deserve it, on some cosmic level. He'd thought about dying, in the weeks after his kids escaped.  
  
Dawn's shadow darkened the wood, and he felt her hand on his shoulder.  
  
"Are you OK?" Dawn's voice was a tense whisper.   
  
He corrected himself. "Physical pain is temporary. Emotional damage is permanent." Shooting Eva was a mistake. Dreams about a pool of blood slowly growing around the girl still turned up now, making his first morning thought about exactly how much bourbon would be required to erase the dream.  
  
Lydecker felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Eva was going to make Dawn watch. Whatever happened, Dawn wouldn't forget.   
  
****  
  
Dawn felt a shiver go through Dek's shoulder, and she let her hand slide off and away from him. She studied the lines of his face, and tried to remember where she had seen that combination of pain and determination before. "Emotional meltdown – any second now."  
  
The red-haired girl, Eva, blocked the doorway. She seemed so certain that the pistol in her hands gave her control. "Two thousand nine," thought Dawn. "If she's twenty now, she would have been eight or nine back then."   
  
Dawn felt the tension singing in the air between the two of them. The conflict between the old soldier and the young one was going to turn into real violence soon.  
  
"Shit," she scolded herself. "Either sort it out, or call in a family therapist. Lots of luck finding one with weekend office hours."  
  
"So, Eva," she asked cautiously, "what happened after you escaped?"  
  
"I don't remember," the girl answered, with a frown creasing her forehead. "I woke up in the back seat of an SUV. It was moving, and telephone poles flickered past the window, until it was totally dark. I was still half-drugged, and everything hurt, and when I finally managed to sit up and look out, it was just flat snow, and a long straight road.  
  
"The man in the driver's seat noticed that I was awake, and asked how I was, and I wouldn't talk to him. He had a beard, and wore an orange knit hat. I guess I assumed that he was the enemy. 'I'm taking you home,' he told me." Eva shook her head. "I didn't understand."  
  
"Where did you go?" Dawn reminded herself to breathe. Just keep them all talking.   
  
"He stopped the car in front of a little house in the middle of nowhere. The lights in front of the door came on, and a woman wearing a red sweater and pale blue fuzzy slippers stepped out into the snow and the wind. I wondered if she was enemy, too."  
  
"Were they?"  
  
"No. The man carried me upstairs. I thought about fighting it, but knew that I couldn't. She followed, and they put me to bed in a little room with pink wallpaper, and stuffed teddy bears on top of the dresser." Dawn noticed Eva's slight smile before she continued. "The woman kissed me, told me 'good night,' and promised she'd cook whatever I wanted for breakfast in the morning."  
  
Dawn glanced at Dek. He was watching Eva now, instead of whatever horrors he'd been seeing inside his head.  
  
"I couldn't figure it out," continued Eva. "I decided that it was some sort of trick, or some kind of trap. You always taught us not to ever leave anyone behind, back then. I knew the rest of my unit would come find me."  
  
"When did they find you?" asked Lydecker. He sat up slowly, and pushed the floor away with his left hand.  
  
"I waited for a long time. Months passed. No one ever came. No sign of anyone. Then I knew that you killed them all. You shot me first, then the rest. They were never going to rescue me, because they were all dead. I promised myself that one day I'd find you, and then we'd be even." Her voice shook, but the pistol didn't.  
  
"But they aren't dead!" exclaimed Dawn. "I saw. . ." an empty room, she realized.  
  
Eva's attention and the gun focused on her. "I didn't realize nine millimeters was that big," Dawn thought, and decided that "cold sweat" was a really good description of the phenomenon.  
  
"Go on," ordered Eva.   
  
"Dek told me that one of the boys from the oh-nine escape was captive – he didn't say who by – and I wanted to go talk." Dawn took a deep breath, and continued. "The room was empty, and there were signs of machinery that used to be there."  
  
"An empty room?" Eva snarled. "Please, just tell me why I shouldn't shoot both of you."  
  
"Because X5-599 was alive when I visited him," interrupted Lydecker. "I couldn't get him out, but lots of the others are still alive on the outside."  
  
"Live liar, or dead and quiet?" Eva's face was blank, as she swung the gun back to point at Lydecker. "Why are you still alive?"  
****  
  
"If I tell you why I'm not dead yet, will you stop trying to kill me?" Lydecker wasn't expecting agreement, and he didn't get it. He flexed his fingers slowly, feeling bruised flesh complain as he closed his hand.  
  
"No. No promises." The gun didn't move.  
  
"When you were five, it became clear that the X-5s didn't have any of the problems that the X-2s had. So, it was time to start training you for combat. All sorts. We decided that I needed to be able to work with you and the rest of the Xs with as little risk as possible."  
  
"The day Zack turned eight, he told me he was sure he could take you in a fair fight." A slight smile lifted one corner of her mouth.  
  
"He was right, Eva." Lydecker remembered the boy's focused expression. "One of the deep conditioning things that the psyc guys did was make you unable to kill me. Not anyone else, just me."  
  
"So she can't hurt you?" asked Dawn hopefully.  
  
"No such luck," he answered. "Ten years ago, she couldn't kill me. No telling what is left of that conditioning now. And, in any case, the less we tampered with their innate aggression, the better the final results. She can definitely hurt me." He opened his hand again, carefully.  
  
"So I miss a perfectly good shot because you've been messing with my mind?" Eva muttered through clenched teeth. "I wonder if I can push you out a window and let gravity kill you."  
  
"Too messy, Eva."  
  
Silence. The rustle of a squirrel in dead leaves, and the rumble of traffic on the main road seemed to leave the empty spaces in the room alone.  
  
"Who has the weapon, here?" asked Eva.  
  
Lydecker looked at Dawn. Dawn was definitely not carrying the HK pistol. Where had she put it?  
  
"You do, Eva." He decided to shift the conversation a little bit. Every little bit of confusion on distraction would help. "The rest of your unit escaped. What do you want to know?"  
  
"Why haven't I heard about them?"  
  
"They learned all the skills I was going to teach them." He had vivid memories of several of Max's narrow escapes. "How to blend in. Don't be noticed, don't attract attention. They were all smart kids."  
  
"If you were lying, sir, that is exactly what you would tell me."  
  
"It's the truth."  
  
"Prove it. Figure out what your life is worth, and buy it."  
  
"Tinga's dead, Eva. Just recently, and not my doing. She has a four-year-old son. Smart kid."  
  
"Nice try. Dead is dead."  
  
"Zack is the one I've seen most recently. He was hurt, but he is recovering. I don't know where he is now."  
  
"Show me the money, asshole."  
  
"Max. Max is free. I don't know where she is, but I think I know how you can make contact."  
  
"You are just trying to get rid of me."  
  
"I'm telling you the truth. There aren't any lies that will get me out of this."  
  
"Find something I can believe, then."  
  
Lydecker tried to slow down the whirling energy of his thoughts. "I just need to focus," he told himself. "One thing. Just pick one thing to accomplish here. Get the initiative back from Eva. Take control. You can pull the trigger on her one more time. It will cost, but you can do it. Where did Dawn put the HK?"  
  
****  
  
Dawn watched Dek's eyes focus in the distance. "What is he up to?" she wondered. "More important, how does he get Eva to back down?"  
  
"They are all dead, Lydecker," snarled Eva. "You can't even show me the bodies."  
  
Dawn wondered what sort of proof that Eva would accept, short of having a live X-5 walk into the room. Twelve boxes in the living room were filled with newspaper clippings and news printouts, all of which indirectly pointed to the existence of the X project. Dawn believed. Why wouldn't Eva?  
  
She watched Lydecker search the room, with only his eyes moving. "He's up to something," she thought. "Someone's going to die. Like the security guard, like the driver that was following us." She felt small and cold.  
  
Death. It was so easy to make dead people disappear. All that would be left of Eva was little yellowed slips of newsprint. Maybe not even that. Dawn would have to make another file folder, with the picture of baby Eva from a scientific conference in '02, and another picture of an 'unknown woman found dead.' There would be a print of the score bulletin from the pistol match and a few other things, but that would be it.  
  
Dawn had so many boxes, so many newspaper clippings.  
  
"I've got your proof, Eva!" She could picture the cream-colored, dog-eared folder, in the third box on the left. It was held together with rubber bands, and had an enormous number of newspaper articles with lurid headlines. She hadn't put anything in that folder for months.  
  
Eva and Dek were both staring at her, and she felt her cheeks heat up. "I need to get something from the other room."  
  
"No games," said Eva, "Or you help me dig a large hole." Eva stepped out of the doorway, and Dawn dived past her. The stacked boxes in the living room held the answer.  
  
The first box was the wrong one, and it split and spilled as Dawn dropped it. Two more landed with enough force to shake the plates in the kitchen cupboards. She set down the next box firmly, and tossed the lid onto the bed that Dek had been sleeping in.  
  
It wasn't hard to find the right folder. Blood and guts always sold newspapers, so she'd found lots of articles on that killer. A thick folder, telling a story that she didn't understand. It took both hands to lift it out from the mass of files.  
  
Dawn ran the few steps back in to her bedroom. Dek and Eva were still trying to stare each other down.  
  
"Take a look," she said, and spilled the contents of the file onto the floor at Eva's feet.  
  
"Here is the first one. It's a murder. The victim is found with no teeth, and a fresh tattoo. It's a bar code." Dawn carefully unfolded the yellowed clipping. "No arrests, no convictions, nothing."  
  
"Until the next one." She pressed another piece of newspaper flat against the floor. This one was written for a tabloid: it also had one of the crime scene photos. The twisted and bloody body, just as it had been found.  
  
"And the next one." She didn't even bother to flatten this clipping. The picture showed a bar code tattoo.  
  
*****  
Lydecker watched Dawn spill the clippings from a folder. That had been a huge failure. The kid had been totally bug-fuck crazy, and it hadn't quite been covered up. Too sensational, too bloody. The tabloids had been all over it. It made him feel sick to think that Dawn had been tracking that.  
  
"Ben!" Eva's eyes were wide, and the color had left her face. "Holy shit. It's Ben."  
  
Lydecker slowly got to his feet, and backed away from the two women and the file of newspaper clippings. He slid his hand under the pillows on Dawn's bed, and between the mattress and the headboard. "Okay, Dawn," he thought, "what did you do with it? I don't have time for a real search."  
  
He noted that Eva had put the Glock on the floor, and was kneeling to examine Dawn's file of clippings.   
  
Quickly and silently, he crossed the room to Dawn's computer and the desk. The top drawer slid open, and he patted the crumpled receipts and a printer manual with a coffee stain. Nothing but paper.  
  
A glance towards the two women confirmed that both of them were still looking through Dawn's pile of scrap newspaper.  
  
"Did you know him?" Dawn asked quietly. Her face was towards Eva, so he couldn't see the expression that went with that soft tone.  
  
"Part of my unit," Eva answered, "he was always the one who could explain things. He made up these incredible stories."  
  
Lydecker opened the second drawer. The rattle of screwdrivers warned him to go slowly. The pistol was resting on a tangle of red and black wires. He lifted it out, and closed the drawer. He turned back towards Eva, carefully keeping the weapon between his body and the desk.  
  
"Is this Ben?" Dawn pointed at one of the larger and more gruesome photos.  
  
Eva shifted the papers around. "That's Ben's bar code."  
  
"What is it doing on all these people?"  
  
Lydecker checked the safety with his thumb, and slid the pistol under his waistband. The feel of the situation had changed. Eva was focused on Dawn's file, and seemed to have forgotten her earlier plans. The cold metal against his spine was warming, slowly.  
  
"I don't know, but our unit had a mission that ended like this." She pulled a clipping to the top of the pile. A twisted body had been photographed in full color.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"We'd been ordered to keep a man from escaping. He was armed, we weren't, and when we caught up with him. . ." Eva shivered.  
  
"Who was he?" Dawn's forehead creased.  
  
"Someone motivated," interrupted Lydecker. His hands were on the edge of the desk, and he wondered if he shouldn't just draw and fire now. "We pulled a man off death row, and told him he was free if he could run away."  
  
"That's crazy!"  
  
"No, it's not. It was a real-world test. A live fire exercise to prove the concept."  
  
"We were eight," Eva protested. She pushed a curl of red hair back behind her ear.  
  
"You were old enough." He let his fingertips rest on the table behind him. The time wasn't right to draw. "You and your unit worked as a team, and didn't hesitate. You accomplished your objective."  
  
"Who asks a kid to do something like that?" demanded Dawn. She held up a color print from some conspiracy web site.   
  
"He did." Eva swept the clippings to one side, and put her hand on the Glock.   
  
"Can you do that again?" Lydecker felt cold sweat come with the certainty that he'd probably not be able to draw in time.  
  
"Just watch me," snarled Eva. She scrambled to her feet, and the Glock pointed at his chest, again.  
  
"Why?" asked Dawn. "Ben got out. Dek didn't kill Ben. The rest of the X-5s are still free."   
  
"How do you know?" Eva was still looking at him across the sights, even though she was now listening to Dawn.   
  
"There are lots more odd news stories about teenage kids who run too fast or jump too high. There are others."   
  
"How many?"  
  
"I don't know, exactly," Dawn confessed. "There usually isn't enough information to identify an individual, and Dek hasn't been helping, much."  
  
Lydecker felt Eva's attention shift back to him. The creases between her eyebrows had smoothed out, and the hard line of her mouth had softened.  
  
"Who is still out here?" she asked. "How do I re-join my unit?" The pleading tone of her voice surprised him.  
  
"I'll tell you what I know," he answered as gently as he knew how. He could tell that his hands would be shaking if he didn't have them pressed against the desk. "Put down my pistol and we'll talk."  
  
He watched her set the Glock back on Dawn's dresser. He realized that his own resolve to shoot Eva had evaporated. It wasn't necessary, and he wouldn't have been able to put pressure on the trigger anyway. "I'm not going to repeat that mistake," he told himself. "Maybe this will work out after all."  
  
"Where do I look?" Eva asked, with her hands in her coat pockets. Her expression reminded him of a lost child. The urge to put an arm around her was familiar, and he pushed it back the way he always did before.  
  
"Jace, Zack, Krit, Syl, and a few others have all been in Seattle at some time during the past year. They made contact with Max, who is still there." He picked up the pad of paper that was still resting on the corner of the bed, and tossed it to Eva.  
  
"I don't know where to find her, but that address will be a good start." He watched Eva tilt the paper, so she could read the imprint of his writing on the otherwise blank top sheet.  
  
"Logan Cale." Eva ripped off the page. "Foggle Tower, in Seattle. That shouldn't be too hard to find. Who is he?" She folded it carefully, and put it in a pocket.  
  
"He's a good guy. I know he will be able to put you in touch with Max, and probably some of the others." Lydecker knew that his kids would need to stick together to deal with White. Logan would be keeping track of them, if he could.  
  
"Eva?" Dawn hesitated. "Will you come back and tell me who you find? Help me with my files?"  
  
"No promises, Dawn. I'm just not sure what I'll do when I find them."   
  
"Oh," interrupted Lydecker. "You are probably going to want this back." He slowly slid the pistol out of his belt and held it in front of him. He grasped it between the pad of his thumb and his fingertips, with the muzzle pointing at the floor.  
  
Eva's eyes went wide, and she carefully accepted the pistol, checked the safety, and put it in her coat pocket with Logan's address. "Where did you find this?"  
  
"A relaxing little walk in the woods." He knew she wasn't going to be aiming at him again, there was no point in bringing it up.  
  
"You could have shot me, just now." He could barely hear her whisper, but he couldn't miss her hands trembling.  
  
"No, I couldn't." He was surprised at how hard it was to keep his voice steady. "It was a mistake the first time."  
  
Lydecker remembered her as a little girl, with a strawberry-blonde brush cut. He put an arm around Eva's shoulders, and felt the tension ripple through her. "Back off," he told himself. He felt like his throat was squeezing shut. "It's too little, too late." He stumbled back towards the desk.  
  
The girl's coffee-colored eyes fixed on him for a moment. "Thank you for the address, I appreciate it." She nodded to Dawn, who was sorting bits of newspaper, then turned towards the door.  
  
"Wait!" said Lydecker, suddenly. "Let me know if you find them. You don't have to tell me where. You don't have to talk to me. Call Dawn. She'll pass a message along."   
  
"You're in no position to make demands of me." Her voice was even, except for a little undertone of amusement. She looked over her shoulder, back at him.  
  
"Not a demand. I just want to know that you're okay, that they're okay."   
  
"Don't expect any Father's day cards, old man." Eva's frown softened. "Don't hold your breath, but one day I might decide to drop by and give you a status report. You don't deserve it, though."  
  
"No, I don't," he agreed.  
  
Eva stomped out of the apartment, and the door slammed closed behind her.  
  
****  
  
Dawn tried to fit the last of her papers back into the torn folder. She wondered what "Ben" was like, in person. None of the photos were actually Ben. They were just pictures of things he'd done.  
  
She climbed to her feet, and stepped over part of a chair leg. In the living room, she set the "Ben" folder on the big pile of papers which were spilling out of the torn box.  
  
She re-traced her footsteps back to the bedroom. Dek was sitting in the chair in front of her desk, and looking at the broken pieces of wood that were scattered on the floor. "It can't be fixed."  
  
"I'm not so sure about that." She picked up one of the legs.   
  
"Eva is never going to make contact again." He covered his face with his hands.  
  
"You don't know that. Are you really happy she tried to track you down and kill you?"  
  
"I'm just glad she's alive. I'm scared, Dawn. The more I know about what they are up against. . ."  
  
"She survived you! Give the girl some credit."  
  
"Oh, yes." He looked up at Dawn, and frowned. "You know, there was no guarantee that Eva wouldn't kill you after she finished with me."  
  
"I wasn't thinking about that."  
  
"You should have been." He stood up, and kicked aside a broken wooden slat. "You are safer if I'm somewhere else."  
  
"Where?"  
  
"You are safer if you don't know." He stood in front of the dresser.  
  
"Wait just a Goddamn minute!" Dawn's rage surprised herself. "Why don't you ask me what I want? It didn't take me that long to figure out that you were trouble."  
  
"You just didn't figure out how much trouble." Now he was facing her, but examining the Glock. She could see the glint of brass as he shifted the slide back, then let it drop. The pistol was still loaded.  
  
"Uh, I don't mean to rub it in, but Eva surprised you, too." That got his full attention.  
  
Dek looked away from her, and seemed embarrassed. "That was a very skillful piece of negotiation, Dawn. Thanks." He set the pistol back where he'd picked it up.  
  
"I like us as a team, Dek. You can go if you really need to, but I'm not going to kick you out." She wondered if hitting Lydecker with a chair leg would slow him down, or just make him mad.   
  
"Do you know how long it's been since I was a team player?" He crouched, and reached under the bed.   
  
Dawn shook her head. Dek handed her a long fragment, which used to be the back leg of the chair. "You aren't doing badly," she said.  
  
He collected a couple of slats, and a crossbar that had rolled under the desk. "I don't want to fuck it up. If I can't fix it right, I shouldn't start." He set the pieces of wood in her hands.  
  
"I know you're willing to take chances, Dek, if it's something you want." She examined the dried glue on the end of one of the bits.   
  
"Yes, but what about you? Are you really willing to put a lot of time and effort into some old piece of junk?"  
  
"Please don't go!"  
  
"You know that the next time I need to run, you will have to come with me."  
  
"Is that a threat?" For some reason, Dawn felt a need to giggle.  
  
"It won't be safe." He took the pile of broken chair parts out of her hands, and set them down in the corner.  
  
"Neither is crossing the street, Dek. I know it sounds weird, but I feel safer with you around." She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, tightly.  
  
Lydecker looked down at her hand, but didn't pull away.  
  
"Okay, Dawn. First, I'm going to make another pot of coffee." He laughed softly. "Then, I'm going to tell you the whole story, everything. We will see how safe you feel after that."  
  
"It will be too late to change my mind, then."  
  
"I know." 


End file.
